Success Factors for an E-Government Strategy: Austrian Experiences, Indonesian Challenges

Focus of this paper are success factors for the implementation of an E-Government strategy. Whileconcepts for a sophisticated strategy process in Public Sector are delivered on a regular basis, the gapbetween ambitious planning and its implementation seems to get wider. Authors seek to define whatmakes a “good strategy” in order to enhance management capacity. Meanwhile some scholars fromPolitical Science see limitation of Governments on announcements which are not followed up bysufficient action rather as systematic problems, challenging concept and rules of liberal westerndemocracy, or owed to growing complexity of Governance under the conditions of globalization. Incontext of the introduction of New Public Management and its perception of citizens as customers andon the basis of new available technical options in Information Society, a key Governance reform projectin European and other Countries over the last fifteen years has been the introduction of E-Government.European market leader in this field is Austria. The author reviews concept and implementationexperiences of the Austrian E-Government strategy, analyzes key success factors and opens adiscussion, under which conditions a successful implementation of E-Government can take place inIndonesia

Educational Governance Today

In the communication and knowledge based globalvillage, under the conditions of dynamic Change inan economy driven world, education has become acomplex and challenging endeavor, both for individualsand organizations. Learning has changeddramatically: knowledge and skills are quickly outdatedand devaluated, giving education a new meaningwithin an individual biography; schools, universitiesand other providers of education go throughorganizational revolutions, who are challenging theirself-concept and management; governments areunder pressure to reshape Educational Governanceaccording to new paradigms with the overall goalto sustain national or regional competitiveness. Arekey actors in the education system ready to face thesechallenges and to modernize their organizations?Starting from an overview on the Complexity of Learningin modern societies, generalizable consequencesare reviewed in a case study on Germany. It leads toa framework for a necessary research project incountries such as Indonesia, which are still aheadof educational reform. The focus is on the organizationalmeso and macro level that is playing the keyrole in Educational Governance

The impact of Lyman-α\alpha radiative transfer on large-scale clustering in the Illustris simulation

Lyman-$\alpha$ emitters (LAEs) are a promising probe of the large-scale structure at high redshift, $z\gtrsim 2$. In particular, the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment aims at observing LAEs at 1.9 $<z<$ 3.5 to measure the Baryon Acoustic Oscillation (BAO) scale and the Redshift-Space Distortion (RSD). However, Zheng et al. (2011) pointed out that the complicated radiative transfer (RT) of the resonant Lyman-$\alpha$ emission line generates an anisotropic selection bias in the LAE clustering on large scales, $s\gtrsim 10$ Mpc. This effect could potentially induce a systematic error in the BAO and RSD measurements. Also, Croft et al. (2016) claims an observational evidence of the effect in the Lyman-$\alpha$ intensity map, albeit statistically insignificant. We aim at quantifying the impact of the Lyman-$\alpha$ RT on the large-scale galaxy clustering in detail. For this purpose, we study the correlations between the large-scale environment and the ratio of an apparent Lyman-$\alpha$ luminosity to an intrinsic one, which we call the `observed fraction', at $2<z<6$. We apply our Lyman-$\alpha$ RT code by post-processing the full Illustris simulations. We simply assume that the intrinsic luminosity of the Lyman-$\alpha$ emission is proportional to the star formation rate of galaxies in Illustris, yielding a sufficiently large sample of LAEs to measure the anisotropic selection bias. We find little correlations between large-scale environment and the observed fraction induced by the RT, and hence a smaller anisotropic selection bias than what was claimed by Zheng et al. (2011). We argue that the anisotropy was overestimated in the previous work due to the insufficient spatial resolution: it is important to keep the resolution such that it resolves the high density region down to the scale of the interstellar medium, $\sim1$ physical kpc. (abridged)Comment: 11 pages, published in A&

Performance-based Remuneration for Civil Servants

Within the ongoing discussion about the Governance system in Indonesia and a reform of its PublicAdministration according to principles of Good Governance, a new remuneration system for civilservants is regarded a strategic key issue. The article outlines dimensions of the issue and gives aninsight on discourse and current reform approaches. An outlook on necessary steps ahead stresses, thatAdministrative Reform is not a topic for th

Investigation of the Photocatalytic Hydrogen Production of Semiconductor Nanocrystal-Based Hydrogels

Destabilization of a ligand-stabilized semiconductor nanocrystal solution with an oxidizing agent can lead to a macroscopic highly porous self-supporting nanocrystal network entitled hydrogel, with good accessibility to the surface. The previously reported charge carrier delocalization beyond a single nanocrystal building block in such gels can extend the charge carrier mobility and make a photocatalytic reaction more probable. The synthesis of ligand-stabilized nanocrystals with specific physicochemical properties is possible, thanks to the advances in colloid chemistry made in the last decades. Combining the properties of these nanocrystals with the advantages of nanocrystal-based hydrogels will lead to novel materials with optimized photocatalytic properties. This work demonstrates that CdSe quantum dots, CdS nanorods, and CdSe/CdS dot-in-rod-shaped nanorods as nanocrystal-based hydrogels can exhibit a much higher hydrogen production rate compared to their ligand-stabilized nanocrystal solutions. The gel synthesis through controlled destabilization by ligand oxidation preserves the high surface-to-volume ratio, ensures the accessible surface area even in hole-trapping solutions and facilitates photocatalytic hydrogen production without a co-catalyst. Especially with such self-supporting networks of nanocrystals, the problem of colloidal (in)stability in photocatalysis is circumvented. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and photoelectrochemical measurements reveal the advantageous properties of the 3D networks for application in photocatalytic hydrogen production

The low and declining risk of malaria in travellers to Latin America: is there still an indication for chemoprophylaxis?

A comparison was made between local malaria transmission and malaria imported by travellers to identify the utility of national and regional annual parasite index (API) in predicting malaria risk and its value in generating recommendations on malaria prophylaxis for travellers

Cost-effectiveness analysis of malaria chemoprophylaxis for travellers to West-Africa

BACKGROUND: The importation of malaria to non-endemic countries remains a major cause of travel-related morbidity and a leading cause of travel-related hospitalizations. Currently they are three priority medications for malaria prophylaxis to West Africa: mefloquine, atovaquone/proguanil and doxycycline. We investigate the cost effectiveness of a partial reimbursement of the cheapest effective malaria chemoprophylaxis (mefloquine) for travellers to high risk areas of malaria transmission compared with the current situation of no reimbursement. METHODS: This study is a cost-effectiveness analysis based on malaria cases imported from West Africa to Switzerland from the perspective of the Swiss health system. We used a decision tree model and made a literature research on the components of travel related malaria. The main outcome measure was the cost effectiveness of malaria chemoprophylaxis reimbursement based on malaria and deaths averted. RESULTS: Using a program where travellers would be reimbursed for 80% of the cost of the cheapest malaria chemoprophylaxis is dominant (i.e. cost saving and more effective than the current situation) using the assumption that currently 68.7% of travellers to West Africa use malaria chemoprophylaxis. If the current usage of malaria chemoprophylaxis would be higher, 82.4%, the incremental cost per malaria case averted is € 2'302. The incremental cost of malaria death averted is € 191'833.The most important factors influencing the model were: the proportion of travellers using malaria chemoprophylaxis, the probability of contracting malaria without malaria chemoprophylaxis, the cost of the mefloquine regimen, the decrease in the number of travellers without malaria chemoprophylaxis in the reimbursement strategy. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that a reimbursement of 80% of the cost of the cheapest effective malaria chemoprophylaxis (mefloquine) for travellers from Switzerland to West Africa is highly effective in terms of malaria cases averted and is cost effective to the Swiss health system. These data are relevant to discussions about the cost effectiveness of malaria chemoprophylaxis reimbursement for vulnerable groups such as those visiting friends and relatives who have the highest risk of malaria, who are least likely to use chemoprophylaxis

A scalable monitoring for the CMS Filter Farm based on elasticsearch

A flexible monitoring system has been designed for the CMS File-based Filter Farm making use of modern data mining and analytics components. All the metadata and monitoring information concerning data flow and execution of the HLT are generated locally in the form of small documents using the JSON encoding. These documents are indexed into a hierarchy of elasticsearch (es) clusters along with process and system log information. Elasticsearch is a search server based on Apache Lucene. It provides a distributed, multitenant-capable search and aggregation engine. Since es is schema-free, any new information can be added seamlessly and the unstructured information can be queried in non-predetermined ways. The leaf es clusters consist of the very same nodes that form the Filter Farm thus providing natural horizontal scaling. A separate central" es cluster is used to collect and index aggregated information. The fine-grained information, all the way to individual processes, remains available in the leaf clusters. The central es cluster provides quasi-real-time high-level monitoring information to any kind of client. Historical data can be retrieved to analyse past problems or correlate them with external information. We discuss the design and performance of this system in the context of the CMS DAQ commissioning for LHC Run 2